Decoding Consciousness and Bioethics

Decoding Consciousness and Bioethics PDF

Author: Alberto García Gómez

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2022-11-15

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 1527591115

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Human consciousness is one of the most fascinating mysteries sheltered by the brain, evidencing that what happens between our ears is more important than what happens outside our skull. In addition, how do we know whether someone other than ourselves is conscious? This book offers a compelling bioethical analysis of one of the most intriguing topics of neuroscience: states of consciousness. It brings together the thought-provoking contributions of international experts concerning the role of bioethics in fostering dialogue between different, but related, fields of study concerning human consciousness and its altered states, including ethics of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy and anthropology, theology, clinical ethics, law and social studies.

Bioethics and Consciousness

Bioethics and Consciousness PDF

Author: Alberto García Gómez

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-08-03

Total Pages: 110

ISBN-13: 1527573370

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The study of consciousness and its psychological and neuroscientific correlates is of major importance for all scientists and clinicians today. However, only a multidisciplinary study can make us understand the ultimate reality of consciousness. This book not only reviews the neuroscientific and psychological foundations and phenomena of consciousness, awareness, self-consciousness and neurobioethics, but also provides a new, interdisciplinary model of the current scientific studies and definitions of consciousness. As such, it offers a multidisciplinary bridge between the brain, mind, philosophy, the introspective self-consciousness, the human identity and free will.

The Ethics of Consciousness

The Ethics of Consciousness PDF

Author: Walter Glannon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-07-14

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 1009085247

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This Element examines the main ethical aspects of consciousness It argues that consciousness is not intrinsically valuable but has value or disvalue for individuals depending on its phenomenology (what it is like to be aware) and content (what one is aware of). These two components of awareness shape normative judgments about how ordered, disordered, altered, restored, diminished and suppressed conscious states can benefit or harm individuals. They also influence moral judgments about whether intentionally causing these states is permissible or impermissible and how these states can affect behavior. After describing its neurobiological basis, this Element discusses ethical and legal issues in six categories of consciousness: phenomenal and access consciousness; intraoperative awareness; prolonged disorders of consciousness, dissociative disorders, the role of consciousness in determining death; and altering and suppressing awareness near the end of life.

Finding Consciousness

Finding Consciousness PDF

Author: Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0190280301

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The prominent contributors provide background information, survey the issues and positions, and take controversial stands from a wide variety of perspectives, including neuroscience and neurology, law and policy, and philosophy and ethics.

Consciousness and Moral Status

Consciousness and Moral Status PDF

Author: Joshua Shepherd

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-23

Total Pages: 150

ISBN-13: 1315396327

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It seems obvious that phenomenally conscious experience is something of great value, and that this value maps onto a range of important ethical issues. For example, claims about the value of life for those in Permanent Vegetative State (PVS); debates about treatment and study of disorders of consciousness; controversies about end-of-life care for those with advanced dementia; and arguments about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, and non-human animals arguably turn on the moral significance of various facts about consciousness. However, though work has been done on the moral significance of elements of consciousness, such as pain and pleasure, little explicit attention has been devoted to the ethical significance of consciousness. In this book Joshua Shepherd presents a systematic account of the value present within conscious experience. This account emphasizes not only the nature of consciousness, but also the importance of items within experience such as affect, valence, and the complex overall shape of particular valuable experiences. Shepherd also relates this account to difficult cases involving non-humans and humans with disorders of consciousness, arguing that the value of consciousness influences and partially explains the degree of moral status a being possesses, without fully determining it. The upshot is a deeper understanding of both the moral importance of phenomenal consciousness and its relations to moral status. This book will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, bioethics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.

Protecting the Mind

Protecting the Mind PDF

Author: Pablo López-Silva

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-03-01

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 3030940322

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This book offers a comprehensive analysis of philosophical, social, ethical, and legal challenges arising as a consequences of current advances in neurosciences and neurotechnology. It starts by offering an overview of fundamental concepts such as mental privacy, personal autonomy, mental integrity, and responsibility, among others. In turn, it discusses the influence of possible misuses or uncontrolled uses of neurotechnology on those concepts, and, more in general, on human rights and equality. Then, it makes some original proposals to deal with the main ethical, legal, and social problems associated to the use of neurotechnology, both in medicine and in everyday life, suggesting possible policies to protect privacy, neural data, and intimacy. Crossing the borders between humanities, natural sciences, bio-medicine, and engineering, and taking into account geographical and cultural differences, this book offers a conceptual debate around policy and decision making concerning some of the key neuroethical challenges of our times. It offers a comprehensive guide to the most important issues of neurojustice and neuroprotection, together with a set of new paradigms to face some of the most urgent neuroethical problems of our times.

Pragmatic Neuroethics

Pragmatic Neuroethics PDF

Author: Eric Racine

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 026201419X

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A survey of the emerging field of neuroethics that calls for a multidisciplinary, pragmatic approach for tackling key issues and improving patient care. Today the measurable health burden of neurological and mental health disorders matches or even surpasses any other cluster of health conditions. At the same time, the clinical applications of recent advances in neuroscience are hardly straightforward. In Pragmatic Neuroethics, Eric Racine argues that the emerging field of neuroethics offers a way to integrate such specialties as neurology, psychiatry, and neurosurgery with the humanities and social sciences, neuroscience research, and related healthcare professions, with the goal of tackling key ethical challenges and improving patient care. Racine provides a survey of the often diverging perspectives within neuroethics, offers a theoretical framework supported by empirical data, and discusses the neuroethical implications of such issues as media coverage of neuroscience innovation and the importance of public concerns and lay opinion; nonmedical use of pharmaceuticals for performance enhancement; and the discord between intuitive notions about consciousness and behavior and the scientific understanding of them. Racine proposes a pragmatic neuroethics that combines pluralistic approaches, bottom-up research perspectives, and a focus on practical issues (in contrast to other more theoretical and single-discipline approaches to the field). [He discusses ethical issues related to powerful neuroscience insights into the mechanisms underlying moral reasoning, cooperative behavior, and such emotional processes as empathy.] In addition, he outlines a pragmatic framework for neuroethics, based on the philosophy of emergentism, which identifies conditions for the meaningful contribution of neuroscience to ethics, and sketches new directions and strategies for meeting future challenges for neuroscience and society. Basic Bioethics series

Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics

Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics PDF

Author: Judy Illes

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2011-04-07

Total Pages: 976

ISBN-13: 0191620912

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The past two decades have seen unparalleled developments in our knowledge of the brain and mind. However, these advances have forced us to confront head-on some significant ethical issues regarding our application of this information in the real world- whether using brain images to establish guilt within a court of law, or developing drugs to enhance cognition. Historically, any consideration of the ethical, legal, and social implications of emerging technologies in science and medicine has lagged behind the discovery of the technology itself. These delays have caused problems in the acceptability and potential applications of biomedical advances and posed significant problems for the scientific community and the public alike - for example in the case of genetic screening and human cloning. The field of Neuroethics aims to proactively anticipate ethical, legal and social issues at the intersection of neuroscience and ethics, raising questions about what the brain tells us about ourselves, whether the information is what people want or ought to know, and how best to communicate it. A landmark in the academic literature, the Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics presents a pioneering review of a topic central to the sciences and humanities. It presents a range of chapters considering key issues, discussion, and debate at the intersection of brain and ethics. The handbook contains more than 50 chapters by leaders from around the world and a broad range of sectors of academia and clinical practice spanning the neurosciences, medical sciences and humanities and law. The book focuses on and provides a platform for dialogue of what neuroscience can do, what we might expect neuroscience will do, and what neuroscience ought to do. The major themes include: consciousness and intention; responsibility and determinism; mind and body; neurotechnology; ageing and dementia; law and public policy; and science, society and international perspectives. Tackling some of the most significant ethical issues that face us now and will continue to do so over the coming decades, The Oxford Handbook of Neuroethics will be an essential resource for the field of neuroethics for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, basic scientists in the neurosciences and psychology, scholars in humanities and law, as well as physicians practising in the areas of primary care in neurological medicine.

Consciousness and the Brain

Consciousness and the Brain PDF

Author: Stanislas Dehaene

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-01-30

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0698151402

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WINNER OF THE 2014 BRAIN PRIZE From the acclaimed author of Reading in the Brain and How We Learn, a breathtaking look at the new science that can track consciousness deep in the brain How does our brain generate a conscious thought? And why does so much of our knowledge remain unconscious? Thanks to clever psychological and brain-imaging experiments, scientists are closer to cracking this mystery than ever before. In this lively book, Stanislas Dehaene describes the pioneering work his lab and the labs of other cognitive neuroscientists worldwide have accomplished in defining, testing, and explaining the brain events behind a conscious state. We can now pin down the neurons that fire when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information and understand the crucial role unconscious computations play in how we make decisions. The emerging theory enables a test of consciousness in animals, babies, and those with severe brain injuries. A joyous exploration of the mind and its thrilling complexities, Consciousness and the Brain will excite anyone interested in cutting-edge science and technology and the vast philosophical, personal, and ethical implications of finally quantifying consciousness.

Ethics in Social Networking and Business 2

Ethics in Social Networking and Business 2 PDF

Author: Pierre Massotte

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2017-10-30

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1786302373

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This book, the second of two volumes dedicated to ethics in social networking and business, presents the future and changing paradigms related to ethics, and morality in our interconnected society. This volume analyzes advanced topics, including new technologies, transhumanism and uberization, to provide a more complex, shared and collective environment into why business ethics is essential for managing risks and uncertainties. The Ethics in Social Networking and Business series is the result of a cross-integration of real experiences (from IBM, society and the Rotary Club), transdisciplinary works in decision making, and advances at the boundaries of several scientific fields.